Happy drove around to the private entrance of Stark Industries -- occasionally referred to as “Potts Industries” whenever Mr. Stark was feeling cheeky, though Pepper was against re-branding when the name did a wonder for sales -- and Peter offered him a halfhearted wave goodbye as he slipped out of the car, trying to ignore the worried frown that he was given in turn.

He keeps his head down as he approaches the door, fumbling with his backpack so that he can pull out the key-card that Happy had given him when Mr. Stark had decided that Peter should be spending more time at the Tower. He slips it into the little slot and pulls on the handle when the light turns green, stepping into the pleasantly warm entrance just in time to hear Friday’s greeting him.

“Welcome back, Peter. You are running fifteen minutes late. I will inform Boss of your arrival.”

“Thanks, FRI.” Peter mumbled, sending a bashful smile to the secretary who ran things over here at the private entrance.

She smiled back pleasantly before looking back down at her computer. Probably checking him for weapons. There are more than a dozen cameras on him every time he comes in this way, and for good reason. This entrance was reserved for Mr. Stark, Ms. Potts, and the Avengers, since that was a group of people who had a hard time walking in the front door of any place without being mobbed. Peter still wasn’t sure how he’d ever been included among their ranks.

The elevator door chimed when Peter had, apparently, successfully passed the check. His watch would be the only thing to register as a possible threat but as a personal design of Mr. Stark, any attempts to have FRI do a more detailed examination would be met with a restricted access code, as well as notice that it was authorized equipment for Peter to have.

Peter gives the secretary a little wave and wonders what she thinks of him. If she also thinks it’s impossible that he got into a place like this. Or if she ever thinks about it at all. Maybe one of the parts about working at Stark Industries was just accepting things as they are. Either way, he scurried into the elevator and slipped his badge into another key card reader, there, before pressing one of the three unmarked buttons sitting higher than the ones labeled for the different floors. Mr. Stark’s lab was his designated location, but he knows that one of the other three is for Mr. Stark’s private living suite and the other one is compound away from the compound, where the visiting Avengers would lounge, train, and squabble with each other.

Peter’s never been to Mr. Stark’s “house” of sorts. And he’s never been on the floor for the Avengers by himself, though that’s his fondest dream. He wants to explore it, more than anything, rather than seeing it during quick visits, in and out of the suit. Peter’s almost sure that Mr. Stark would let him if he asked… but, he still isn’t sure that he’s earned it and he’s left chewing on his bottom lip as the elevator starts to carry him to Mr. Stark’s lab, thinking about how great it would be to belong there.

The elevator doors open smoothly to Mr. Stark’s lab… where he’s already there, bent over something on the table. Peter starts to hurry, dropping his backpack so that he can start helping him out, but -

“Lab safety, Underoos. Does that mean anything to you? No running.”

Peter scowls as he slows down. “I wasn’t running. I was walking with purpose.”

“Yeah? Well, you should have been running. Your late and my time is precious.”

Peter stops walking completely, freezing mid-step and looking awkwardly over at Mr. Stark, waiting to see if that was a lecture, a reminder, or a dismissal. He was late, that’s true. And if he’d hurried from the school instead of moping over the field trip, maybe…

“Hey.”

Tony finally looks up and catches sight of the look on Peter’s face, his own lips quirked with bemusement.

“I was just kidding, Peter. What, old men can’t make jokes sometimes? Quit looking like I stole your lunch money, or FRIDAY is going to sicc Pepper on me.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay!” Peter says, voice cracking a little as he tries to reassure both FRIDAY and Mr. Stark, head bobbing in earnest. “I’m okay.”

“The puppy dog eyes beg to differ, but I didn’t get my doctorate in psychology. Should have, though, might have saved me a lot of soul-searching… hey, come here. I want to show you what I’ve been working on. You can help me test it out.”

Peter does trip over himself to scramble to the work bench, coming up next to Mr. Stark and looking down onto the table… only, he doesn’t see anything in front of him and he turns to look at his mentor with an understandably confused look on his face, waiting to see if it’s another joke. But, Mr. Stark doesn’t point to the table. Instead, he holds out his hand and shows Peter… a spider.

A black widow, to be precise. Peter recognizes the red hourglass shaped mark on its abdomen. And Peter, whose last interaction with a Spider included getting bitten and getting strange abilities, flinches back.

“Easy…” Mr. Stark says, sounding like he’s trying not to laugh. “Looks realistic, huh? This is what I’ve been working on for Nat. Well, what you’ve been helping me work on for Nat. All that work you did on creating a microphone that’s half a millimeter long but can still pick up conversations within ten yards? That went into this little beauty. Along with a honing device and a more literal take on “Widow’s bite”. It’s too small for a big electrical shock, not without frying itself in the process, so its fangs administer a toxin designed to knock the bad guys out. Probably less painful than Nat would. Best part?”

Mr. Stark sets the spider down onto the bench, now, and reaches over to grab a wrench. He winks at Peter… and then sends it down, onto the spider.

When he lifts the wrench, the spider has flipped over with legs curled in on itself. A few seconds later, it sits back up.

“It’s uncrushable. And programmed to bite whoever tries to grab it after trying to step on it.”

“Mr. Stark. I am shook. ” Peter says, cautiously prodding the little spider with his index finger. He can’t believe that he had a part in creating it. A small part, but a part nonetheless. “This is so cool. What’s it going to be used for?”

“Gathering intel. I hope. Or, maybe she’ll just want to spy on her neighbors. Either way. As good as she is, there are places she can’t get into. Unlike SPI-DER.”

“Spider?” Peter asks, eyebrows raised. That’s not his most creative acronym, ever.

But Mr. Stark is unashamed of the obvious name. “System for Portable Information, Data Extraction and Retrieval. Come on, kid, I was up all night trying to make that work. Anyway, this’ll keep her out of tight situations. Hopefully. She’s coming by on Friday -”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Not you, FRIDAY.” Tony says, with a half-glare up at the ceiling where the voice came from. And Peter stifled a laugh, knowing that FRI is intelligent enough to know the difference between Mr. Stark talking to the AI and Mr. Stark naming a day in the week. “- to pick it up.”

“This Friday?” Peter asks, eyes bright with excitement. “Mr. Stark, can I come see her? I could help you show her how it works! And I’ll be here anyway, since -”

- Since that’s the day of his field trip.

Peter stops talking abruptly, realizing that he’d almost outed himself. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure how he planned to get past Mr. Stark the day of the field trip, anyway, just carrying the idea that he’d be too busy in one of his labs to realize that Peter was around… but now, realizing that Nat would be in the building, too, his chances suddenly seemed less good.

And Mr. Stark hadn’t been doing his half-listening thing that he did when he was working, discarding whatever information Peter offered that seemed trivial. Which was most information, really. No this time, he was doing his full-listening and seemed very interested in the fact that Peter had stopped talking. But he looks up, instead of at Peter.

“Hey, FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Is Peter scheduled to be in the lab with me this weekend? If so, set a reminder, because I don’t remember -”

“Peter Parker is not scheduled to be in the lab with you this weekend,” The AI interrupted, smoothly. “He is, however, on the list of registered students at Midtown School of Science and Technology and will be attending a tour of Stark Towers with them, from mid-morning to late afternoon.”

Peter could have curled up into himself like SPI-DER had, just then.

“You have a field trip coming here and you didn’t tell me? I’m hurt, kid.” Mr. Stark said, pressing his hand to his chest and faking a mortally wounded look.

“Well, I only just found out today!” Peter said, weakly. “It just hadn’t come up yet.”

“Hey, you got one of those permission slip things? I remember those from high-school. Kind of. Hey, let me sign it. I’ve always wanted to do that. Sign something incredibly unimportant and make it important by virtue of it having been seen by me. Is it in your bag? Come on, let’s -”

“Mr. Stark, I don’t think that’s a very good idea!” Peter said. Maybe a little too sharply, because the smile on Tony’s face faded a little.

“What, you don’t want my signature? Do you have any idea how much that goes for on Ebay?”

“It’s not that! It’s just…”

Peter slumped down onto the bench then, holding his head in his hands and sighing. He’d been so elated over the discovery of SPI-DER, that he’d completely forgotten how awful the end of his day had been. He doesn’t want to burden Mr. Stark with his problems, especially since they’re so inconsequential, but… he also wants to tell someone.

“...No one really believes me about my internship. And, I guess that’s kinda okay because it’s not a really-real internship, anyway. I know I’m just here because I’m Spider-Man, and that’s cool. But I am here! And I even filed that paperwork with the school, the stuff that Ms. Potts gave me? But today my favourite teacher had me stay after class and told me that I’m not allowed to lie about it anymore. That there’s no way I could have this internship and that everyone thinks I’m lying. That I almost got in trouble for filing fake paperwork and the only reason the school is letting me pretend is because they know my Uncle died.”

Peter swallows hard against the lump that forms in his throat when he thinks about Uncle Ben.

“I didn’t expect people like Flash to believe me. And I know I can’t explain the whole Spider-Man thing to them. But it feels awful having people think that I’m lying. Because if it was someone like Flash who was saying the he interned here, no one would call him a liar. Everyone thinks it’s impossible for me because I’m the poor orphan. It sucks.”

Mr. Stark is quiet for so long that Peter thinks he might’ve just put him to sleep with how lame his sob story from school was. And he jerks his head upright, about to apologize for wasting his time, but Mr. Stark raises a finger to silence him and then sits for a minute, seemingly lost in thought.

“Hm,” He says, finally. “You know, I’m not great with this mushy stuff. I think the nicest thing my father ever said to me was that I might not be as much of a fuc - screw up as he thought. But, listen. Here’s the thing. I’m just gonna say something truthful and if it sounds mushy, that’s by accident and you shouldn’t repeat it to any other living person. Ever. Okay?”

“Um, okay.”

“Good. Underoos, you are here because you’re Spider-Man. That’s true. I would have never noticed you without the cute little pajamas and super slinging web action. And it sounds harsh, but that’s life. Success is about the connections you make. You think I would be as successful as I am if my father hadn’t paved the way? I was born with every opportunity afforded to me. You weren’t. Spider-Man was your first opportunity. You got given abilities that could have made or broke you. And you chose to use them for good. That’s how I noticed you, kid. And that was your ticket in. Staying in, though? That was all you. Peter Parker.”

Mr. Stark screws up his face, seemingly lost in thought again.

“I don’t know how you don’t consider this an internship, either. You think I let just anyone into my labs? Not even Rogers can get in here. Spider-Man isn’t what got you through that door, it was your ingenuity. That web formula of yours? I wouldn’t have thought of something like that. That’s why you get to hang out in my lab with me and get to help with things like SPI-DER. People are going to keep underestimating you. Hell, I do it. All the time, I look at you and I go… really? That kid? But, yeah. It’s you. You fall down and you get back up and you do that on your own.”

Peter thinks that his eyes might be watering. That, or it just got really blurry in here all of a sudden. He sniffles and tucks his face into his shirt to discreetly wipe at his nose.

“As for that school of yours… any issues they have with the legality of your paperwork can be taken up with the team of lawyers here at Stark Industries. And I’ve heard that the Stark Industries CEO is a force to be reckoned with.”

Peter looks up again and Mr. Stark winks at him, awkwardly leaning in to give Peter a side-hug.

“Don’t get snot on my shirt kid.”

***

An hour later, after some more tinkering in the lab and some voracious consumption of three pizzas (mostly thanks to Peter), Mr. Stark does sign his permission slip. With a flourish… and enough room for Aunt May to add hers, just in case.

And when Peter leaps out the window, suit on, he feels a lot less like plummeting down and a lot more like flying, leaping from building to building to get back to Queens and listening to Karen’s soothing voice read him the messages he got while he was working.